Line of Fire
by VampirePam
Summary: A disgruntled former client with a gun comes looking for Harvey, and Mike impersonates Harvey to talk the man down. When Harvey insists on taking care of Mike afterwards, however, both men realize their feelings for one another.


**Author's Note: This is the same story as "In the Line of Fire", but I had to upload it as a separate entry because the site wouldn't let me switch it to this category from Miscellaneous. **

"Excuse me, I'm looking for Harvey Specter?" came a voice from Harvey's office door. Mike finished up the sentence he was highlighting in the Williams file before he looked up to take in the visitor. He was not the sort of man most people would have thought at all noteworthy: quite short - approximately 5' 5" at Mike's estimation - a little pudgy, balding, and wearing a suit that even Mike would have called cheap. But most people were not Mike Ross: after three seconds of politely curious staring had yielded the man's basic statistics, four seconds of cheery smiling past that revealed his restless demeanor and furtive expression, and two and a half seconds after that, Mike would have sworn his heart actually stopped when he registered the unmistakable bulge of a gun in the man's jacket.

_Oh God, he's looking for Harvey,_ was Mike's first, terrified thought, and he immediately rejected the possibility of fetching him. This man was almost certainly a disgruntled client of some kind, and even with the gun, Harvey was unlikely to respond to him with anything but arrogance and impatience, and would probably get himself killed. With no time to run through possible scenarios without arousing the man's suspicions, Mike acted on instinct.

"Yes, I'm Harvey Specter," he said, using all his energy to make his voice level and commanding while keeping his posture relaxed.

"You're younger than I expected," the man said suspiciously, shifting his weight continually from one foot to the other.

"I get that a lot," Mike said with a brusque little laugh. "I'm still the best damn closer in the city. Please come in, I'll just tell my secretary that I'm with a client and not to be disturbed."

Mike sent a silent memo to his hand not to tremble as he reached for the phone and pressed the intercom button. "Donna?"

There was a small buzz from the other end of the line, and Donna's flippant tone came through bright and clear, "What do you want?"

Praying to God that Donna wouldn't give the game away, Mike continued quickly, "Donna, I'm with a client, so just tell Mike to drop what he was working on and prep the Parrish briefs. I'll need them for court tomorrow."

"Mike, what-" came Donna's confused reply, but Mike cut her off quickly.

"Yes, Mike, tell Mike. And please hold my calls for the next hour, I'm with a client." He switched off the intercom before she could ask any more questions and turned his complete attention to the man with the gun.

"Now, what can I do for you, sir?" Mike asked, as pleasantly as he could possibly manage.

"You can die, Mr. Specter," the man said, voice full of quiet rage, as he removed the gun from where it had been concealed in his jacket and pointed it directly at Mike.

The real Harvey Specter had not had a good day. Judge Abernathy had not only kept him late at the courthouse, but had also rejected the key evidence in the Hernandez case on the grounds of a faulty warrant, and Harvey would need to start all over again if he expected to make the charges stick. Consequently, as he strode swiftly down the darkened corridors of Pearson Harden toward his office, his mind was too busy searching for a new and brilliant legal strategy to notice Donna running in his direction until she was a few inches away and shaking him by the shoulders.

"Harvey? Harvey?" she demanded, her normally amused expression replaced by one of pure fear that unnerved Harvey instantly.

"Jesus, Donna, what is it?" he asked, all thoughts of warrants and strategies forgotten.

"It's Mike. There's something wrong -" she began, but before she could say more, Harvey had twisted out of her grasp, indulging his first instinct to find Mike and fix whatever was wrong immediately.

"Harvey, stop, you can't!" Donna called after him in a whisper so panicked that Harvey stopped and turned to look at her in confusion.

"He's got a man in your office, and and all I know is, he buzzed me on the intercom to tell me not to disturb him because he was with a client and to tell Mike to prep the Parrish briefs," she explained, looking around nervously as she spoke.

"Wait, he was using my office to entertain a client? Without me?" Harvey would have been affronted if he wasn't so sure that Mike would never do something like that without a very good reason. "And what do you mean, he said to tell Mike?"

"Just what I said!" Donna insisted, "He said 'tell Mike to drop what he was working on and prep the Parrish briefs.' "

"This whole thing doesn't make any sense," Harvey said. "I mean, for one thing, the Parrish case was over months ago, they voted to convict - oh God," Harvey interjected abruptly, the color draining rapidly from his face.

"What is it?" Donna asked worriedly.

"The Parrish case," Harvey said gravely. "It was about a man who came into work with a gun and shot three of his co-workers."

Donna's face paled to match Harvey's as she asked, voice shaking slightly, "You think it was some kind of code?"

Harvey nodded curtly and said, "I have to get to him," before rushing toward his office. At Donna's frantic tugging of his sleeve, he turned and added impatiently, "I'll stay out of sight, I promise."

Harvey crept as inconspicuously as he could down the thankfully sparsely populated hallway - most of the staff had already gone home for the night - until he found a partition from behind which he could see his office, but not be seen. Peeking out carefully from behind it, Harvey felt like someone had punched him in the gut as he found himself staring at what he had been hoping and praying for the past two minutes not to see: a gun, held in a shaking hand, pointed directly at a terrified-looking Mike.

He instinctively lunged out from the partition, his only thought that he had to get that gun as far away from Mike as possible, but found himself pulled back behind it again just as quickly.

Staring at Donna in surprise, he demanded, "What did you do that for?" and tried to shake her off.

"Because you're an idiot who's going to get both of you shot," she whispered fiercely. "Think about it for a second. That man came to your office with a gun - he was looking for you."

"All the more reason I have to go in there! Mike is not dying for me," Harvey insisted, trying desperately to evade Donna's grip and avoid thinking about the fact that he just used the words "Mike" and "dying" in the same sentence.

"I said think, Harvey!" she hissed, nearly slamming him into the partition, "The man was looking for you, yet now that he has Mike, is making no effort to find you."

Harvey said nothing in response, but did stop trying to leave as he considered this.

Donna took a deep breath and finished, "I think Mike told him that he was you."

"What?" Harvey asked in alarm, fear surrounding him from all sides. He slumped against the partition as he was hit by the full weight of what Mike had done and muttered, "That stupid kid."

Finally, he raised his head and asked quietly, "What should we do, Donna?"

She sighed and replied, "I should go get everyone else out of the office - it shouldn't take long, nearly everyone's gone home already - and call the police. You stay here, and for God's sake, don't do anything dumb."

Donna had walked a few paces when she turned, laid a hand on Harvey's arm, and added comfortingly, "Have a little faith in him, Harvey. If anyone can talk down a gunman, Mike can."

Harvey gave her a nod and a weak little smile, then turned his attention back to the events unfolding in his office and hoped to God Donna was right.

"Please, can we talk about this?" Mike asked, trying to keep his voice calm despite the massive bubble of panic rising rapidly in his chest.

"Talk about it?" the man asked with a bitter laugh, "Yeah, all right, let's talk about it, Harvey. Let's talk about how your firm promised me that if I agreed to join the class action against the pharmaceutical company that cost my son his leg, I would get way more than the two hundred and fifty thousand they offered me to settle. Let's talk about how this same pharmaceutical company then offered to bring their billion dollar business to this firm in exchange for you all sabotaging the lawsuit. Or maybe you would prefer to talk about how I'm working triple shifts at the diner just to afford our son's medical bills while you sit here in your plushy corner office sipping ten dollar frappucinos."

"Oxbridge Pharmaceuticals, I remember," Mike said, desperately thinking back on the pile of his past cases Harvey had demanded that he look over. "That was a bad one. A very bad one." It suddenly occurred to him to ask, "But why are you here for me? There was a whole team of lawyers on that case. I wasn't even first chair."

The man's eyes flashed dangerously as he replied, "Sure, Harvey, but you're the one who brought it home. You're - how did you put it? - the 'best damn closer in the city.' You know, I'd never heard that term before I overheard your opposing council talking about how you were close to an agreement with Oxbridge. I asked the man what one was, and you know what he told me? 'A closer is a guy who can make the deal, no matter the cost.' Then I asked him about you, and he just laughed and said, 'Oh, Harvey Specter? He's a shark. The best closer there is.' Between that and your recent promotion to senior partner, it wasn't hard to put together who was behind the verdict of not guilty."

Mike's heart sank as he realized just how far Harvey's reputation proceeded him. A character defense wasn't going to do him any good here, even though he knew for a fact that Harvey hadn't done anything wrong in his handling of the case. With this in mind, he tried something else.

"You're wrong about why the case went south, you know," he said, trying to focus on the man and not the weapon he held. "The pharmaceutical company bribed our expert witness to bomb his testimony. There was nothing we could have done."

"Oh, and I suppose it was just a coincidence that Oxbridge Pharmaceuticals joined your client list just a few weeks later?" the man asked incredulously.

"Not at all," Mike replied. "They were so impressed by our handling of the case that they asked us to represent them. Simple as that."

"And of course you all had no problem with that," the man continued, pacing angrily back and forth in front of the desk, "Representing that company when you knew what they had done to my son, to all those innocent people. You lawyers, you're all just empty suits where people should be. I wonder, if I shot you, would you even bleed?"

With a cruel smile, the man raised the gun once more and cocked it as he aimed the barrel directly toward Mike's face. Abject terror flooded through him, and though he supposed his life should be flashing before his eyes, in reality all he was thinking of was Harvey. That even facing down the barrel of a gun, he didn't regret protecting him. How much he'd miss that stupid grin of his. All the things he never got a chance to tell him.

Suddenly, all of his thoughts of Harvey gave Mike an idea, which brought with it a bright flash of hope that gave him the courage to speak. Mentally finding the necessary details, he interjected, "And what will happen to Christopher?"

This stopped the man dead in his tracks, and he jabbed the gun violently in Mike's direction while demanding, "How the hell do you know his name?"

"I told you," Mike said, his voice firm, though his hands were still trembling, "I remember the case very well. I don't like losing, Mr. Turner, especially not when it means that innocent people get hurt. Innocent people like your son - Christopher Turner, 9 years old, straight As at Anderson Middle School, loved playing soccer."

"Yeah, before he lost his leg, before you people took it away from him!" Turner responded, his eyes filling with tears.

"And on top of all that, you're willing to deprive him of his father?" Mike asked in disbelief.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Turner scoffed, but there was fear in his eyes.

"You kill me right now, you're looking at a minimum of life in prison, possibly execution. Either way, your son loses his father. You'll be abandoning him right when he needs you most," Mike said earnestly.

"And I suppose if I let you go now, I can just walk free?" the man asked sarcastically. "I'm not stupid enough to fall for that."

"No, I can't guarantee that you won't do some time," Mike admitted. "You've been waving a gun at me for the last half an hour in a room with glass walls; someone has almost certainly already called the police, and if they get here and find you like this, there's nothing I can do. But I can promise you this: if you give me the gun right now and give yourself up with a full confession, I will do everything in my power to see that you get leniency."

"And why would you do that?" Turner asked suspiciously, though the logic of Mike's argument seemed to be giving him pause.

"Because what happened with your son's case wasn't right, and I want to do something to at least begin to fix it," Mike said honestly.

Turner stared at him for a long moment and was about to speak when a commotion down the hall caught his attention.

"That'll be the SWAT team," Mike said, drawing Turner's focus back to him, "So you have to decide now, Andrew. What matters more to you - revenge or your son?"

A single tear dripped down Turner's cheek, and he slowly lowered the gun to the ground and put his hands above his head just as a bunch of armed men stormed into the room, one of whom tackled him to the floor.

Mike let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding and stumbled against the desk, unsure his legs could still support him properly. Still, he managed to locate the officer in charge and request that the official record reflect Turner having given himself up - a promise was a promise.

Suddenly, all eyes turned to the man barging violently into the room, and Mike was relieved to see that it was Harvey, until he saw the expression of anger on his face.

"You, come with me," Harvey said brusquely, taking Mike by the hand and leading him out of the room and down the hallway.

Harvey walked so quickly that Mike could barely keep up on his shaky legs, until Harvey finally shoved him into a deserted conference room and began yelling.

"What the hell were you thinking in there?" Harvey shouted at him, more angry than Mike had ever seen him. "I never, ever want to see you do anything that stupid again!"

Mike fully intended to say something appropriately biting like, "I was saving your life, you ass!" but somehow all that came out was a strangled sob.

Harvey's face softened immediately and, after muttering a few curse words at himself, he murmured, "Hey, come here," and pulled Mike to him in a fierce hug.

Mike collapsed against Harvey, clinging to him desperately as his hands bunched in the comfortingly soft wool of Harvey's expensive suit jacket, and he let out all the fear that had been building inside him as a series of shuddering sobs. Harvey simply held him closer, one hand wrapped tightly around Mike's waist, the other running soothingly up and down his neck and over his hair.

"I'm sorry, Mike," Harvey said quietly, relieved to have such tangible proof that Mike was okay currently wrapped around him, "I didn't mean to yell at you. I was just so..." _Freaked out, panicked, terrified, _Harvey thought to himself.

After a few minutes, Mike reluctantly pulled himself back just enough so he could look at Harvey's face, which still appeared pale and worried. He managed the ghost of a laugh and said softly, "Why Harvey, I do believe you care."

Harvey looked at him for a few moments, eyes darting over Mike's face to reassure himself once more that Mike really was all right, then echoed Mike's small laugh and replied quietly, "Didn't know quite how much until today."

Harvey slowly lifted his right hand and used the his knuckles to gently wipe away the few remaining tears on Mike's face. Before he could withdraw, Mike lifted his own hand and lightly held Harvey's in place on his cheek, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

Suddenly the door to the conference room opened, causing both men to turn, although Mike held tight to Harvey's hand. "I'm sorry to interrupt, sir," said a young, somewhat embarrassed-looking policeman, "But the paramedic needs to have a look at Mr. Ross."

Harvey was debating between thinking up some particularly original invectives to throw at the man for interrupting and assuaging his worry by having Mike get looked over when Mike said, "It's fine, I'll be right there."

When Mike sent him a little smile of reassurance, Harvey reluctantly let Mike disentangle himself from his embrace, keeping one arm draped over his shoulders protectively as they followed the policeman out of the room.

The cop sat Mike down in Jessica's office and called in a cheerful, middle-aged paramedic named Francine to have a look at him. Although she initially made a cursory attempt to get Harvey to leave, one patented death stare from him made it abundantly clear that wasn't going to happen, so she let it be.

One shock blanket and a thorough examination later, Francine pronounced Mike shaken, but essentially unharmed, and prescribed plenty of rest.

Although the officer tried to persuade Mike to give a statement, once more, one look from Harvey caused him to remember that it really would be just fine if Mike stopped by the station any time in the following week.

"I could have given him a statement, you know," Mike said as Harvey led him out the front doors of the building. "I'm not helpless."

"No, you most certainly are not," Harvey agreed, signaling his limo driver to pull up to the curb. "But Francine recommended rest, and having questions fired at you by a bunch of policemen is decidedly not restful."

Much too tired to complain further about spending the evening with Harvey instead of being interrogated by a stranger about his near-death experience, Mike climbed into the limo and sank wearily down into the plushy, leather seat.

Harvey slid in after him and, after directing the driver to take them to his place, handed Mike a couple white pills and a glass of water. At Mike's apprehensive look, Harvey said, "Relax, kid, they're just Tylenol. I cleared them with Francine."

Mike gave him a relieved smile and obediently took the pills before leaning his head back on the headrest with a little groan.

"Headache?" Harvey asked sympathetically, and Mike gave him a little nod, keeping his eyes closed.

Harvey reached over and silently began rubbing little circles over Mike's neck and shoulders, then down over his back; gradually, Mike relaxed further and further into the seat, and the grimace of suppressed pain on his face slowly dissipated.

They spent the rest of the ride like that, both indulging in a comfortable silence, until the limo pulled up in front of Harvey's apartment building. Harvey took Mike by the hand once more and led him up to his spacious penthouse loft.

"I swear, your place gets bigger every time I'm in it," Mike said as he flopped down on Harvey's insanely comfortable couch.

"Oh, that's not an illusion," Harvey called from the kitchen. "I plan on slowly, but surely expanding until it covers a whole city block. Sure, the rest of the building might fall over, but I'll worry about that then."

Mike smiled and pulled the white afghan Harvey kept on the sofa around his shoulders, feeling strangely comforted by the overwhelming - for lack of a better word - Harvey-ness of the apartment. It was not warm in any traditional way, but the enormous glass windows, ultra-modern furniture, and unapologetically luxurious decor all said very clearly, "This place belongs to Harvey Specter." He couldn't help but feel safe there, as if Harvey's fierce protectiveness somehow radiated from every black and chrome surface, announcing very clearly that uninvited guests would be severely prosecuted.

"I made you some tea," Harvey said, handing him a mug before plopping himself down in an adjacent chair. "I seem to vaguely recall my mother saying that was the proper thing to do in this sort of situation."

Mike accepted it with a grateful smile, took a sip, and coughed a couple times before asking incredulously, "Did she say you should make it with whisky?"

"That was the only way she ever drank it," Harvey replied bemusedly. "Tea parties in Connecticut were often quite a rowdy affair."

Mike grinned and took another sip, letting the warm liquid pool comfortingly in his stomach. He was about to comment further when he noticed that his mug was cheekily emblazoned in sprawling white script with "Lawyers Never Lose Their Appeal."

"A present?" he asked Harvey teasingly, raising an eyebrow in amusement.

"Donna gave it to me for Christmas last year," Harvey replied. "She gets quite pouty if I don't bring it into work at least once a month, and she's the best goddamn assistant I've ever had by a mile, so it seems like a small price to pay."

"She was the one who called the police today, wasn't she?," Mike asked quietly.

"Yes," replied Harvey, taking a sip of his own whiskey. When a couple minutes had passed in silence, Harvey started, "We don't have to talk about it tonight if you don't want to, Mike."

"No, it's all right," Mike said. He pulled the afghan a little closer around his shoulders, took a long sip of the tea, gave a little sigh, and began. "I was in your office finishing up the Williams brief, when this guy - Andrew Turner - walked in asking for you. I was planning on telling him that you were out, and you'd be back soon, but then I - I saw the gun." Mike paused for another sip of tea and then continued, "I couldn't just let you walk into an ambush."

"For God's sake, why didn't you leave?" Harvey asked in astonishment.

"There were too many variables for me to think of a truly cohesive plan in that small an amount of time," Mike explained. "If I'd left, I would have had no way of knowing whom he would have managed to hurt before he was stopped."

"But why did you say you were me?" Harvey pressed on, "Surely you could have stalled him some other way?"

Mike was silent for a moment before he replied, "I'll admit, I wasn't reasoning terribly logically. From the second I saw that gun to, well, the second he surrendered it, I suppose, I just kept thinking _Please God, don't let him find Harvey. _It seemed to me that the most direct way to keep that from happening was to let him believe he'd already found you."

"Damn it, Mike, I don't want you stepping in front of bullets for me!" Harvey exclaimed, channeling the nervous energy he was trying very hard not to expend on yelling into pacing restlessly around the room.

"You would have gotten yourself killed in under two minutes, what choice did I have?" Mike shouted defensively.

"I have one of _the_ _best_ trial records in the state, what on earth makes you think I wouldn't be able to convince one man not to shoot me?" Harvey demanded, more than a little affronted.

"Because you convince people with confidence and with false logic, and the kind of man angry enough at lawyers to bring a gun to a law firm is only going to be antagonized by either of those," Mike explained a bit impatiently.

"What Andrew Turner needed was someone to listen and someone to be honest with him," Mike continued. "On those counts, even you have to admit, I've got you beat."

Harvey did have to admit - only to himself, of course, never to Mike - that the kid had a point, so he sat back down and asked, "What did you do then?"

"I wanted to send out some sort of S.O.S., but I knew it had to be subtle enough that Turner wouldn't recognize it as such, so I opted for Donna," Mike went on. "I made sure to say that I had a message for Mike so she would know something was up, and mentioned the Parrish brief in the hope that she would go find you, and that you'd put the pieces together."

"She didn't let you down," Harvey said with a sigh. "Came running down the hall more panicked than I'd ever seen her. Told me something was wrong with you, and when she mentioned Parrish, everything just clicked."

"I'll have to send her some flowers tomorrow," Mike said seriously, "She saved my life."

"Both our lives," Harvey corrected with a little raising of his glass to an imaginary Donna. "The second I saw that gun pointed at you, I tried to go hurtling into that office like the Lone Ranger and probably would have gotten us both shot. Luckily for all concerned, Donna pulled me back and talked some sense into me."

"That's not like you," Mike observed with a little frown. "You may act impulsively sometimes, but you always have a plan."

"Well," replied Harvey with a rueful little smile, "I guess you weren't the only one who wasn't reasoning logically."

Mike stared at Harvey in mild amazement for a few moments, then finally continued, "After that, I tried to be as polite as possible to him, hoping that maybe he'd reconsider and just leave, but when I asked him what I could do to help, he said -"

Mike swallowed hard and tried to shake off the little aftershocks of fear the memory was sending through his body. "He said, 'You can die, Mr. Specter.' That was when he pulled out the gun and pointed it at me."

Harvey noticed that Mike's hands were starting to shake again, so he relinquished his position on the chair for one next to Mike on the couch, silently taking Mike's left hand in his and squeezing reassuringly. Mike gave him a grateful little smile and continued, "I was panicked, but I asked him to at least explain, and he did. He was part of the Oxbridge Pharmaceuticals class action, Harvey."

Harvey's face darkened, and he said, "I never felt right about signing Oxbridge after what they did to all those people."

Mike nodded and said, "Luckily, you'd made me read up on all your old case files as a buffer against future liability, so I knew all about the trial. I tried to explain that Oxbridge had sabotaged our expert witness, and that we got their business because they were impressed, not because you'd made any sort of deal with them, but that just made him angrier."

Mike heard the panic creeping round the edges of his voice, so he barreled on, "He said that we lawyers were empty suits where people should be. And then he-"

Mike took a deep breath and continued slowly, "He lifted the gun, and he cocked it, and he said-"

Mike tried taking another couple of breaths, but he couldn't keep the tremor out of his voice or his posture as he finished, " 'I wonder, if I shot you, would you even bleed?' God, Harvey, I thought he was going to kill me right then and there."

Waves of anger, guilt, and empathy washed over Harvey in turns, and, upon seeing that the shaking now wracked Mike's entire body, the only thing he could think to do was wrap an arm tightly around his shoulders and wait for it to subside.

"I thought he was going to kill you, too," Harvey said quietly after a couple of minutes.

"What?" Mike asked, confused, his head snapping up from where he had buried it in his hands.

"The perk of glass windows," Harvey said with a pained smile, "I saw all of it, from the time that Donna came and got me to when the police burst in and took him down. I watched him yell at you. I watched you try to reason with him. And I watched as the whole world just sort of stopped when he aimed that gun at you. I remember being frozen in place, unable to move, and just when my brain got it together enough to scream, 'Run, you idiot, stop him,' you said something, and he lowered the gun just a little, and time started running normally again."

Mike, looking horrified, said, "I had hoped Donna would find you to decode the message, but I didn't think - Oh God, Harvey, I'm so sorry."

Harvey shot him a look of amazement and said vehemently, "Mike, you just got held up at gunpoint because of me. You are not the one who should be sorry."

Feeling the guilt radiating off the other man in waves, Mike took Harvey's hand in his and said firmly, "Harvey, this was not your fault."

"Wasn't it?" Harvey asked, his face full of pain. "If I weren't such a cocky son-of-a-bitch, he never would have found out my name, never would have found you. And if I had cared enough about doing the right thing instead of the right thing for the firm, maybe that man's life wouldn't have been so horrible that he felt he had to fix things with a gun."

"Harvey," Mike said patiently, "You're a lawyer, and a good one, and that by definition means you have to be a cocky son-of-a-bitch. And I read every single page of the Oxbridge file, and I can tell you honestly, there was nothing you could have done. Sometimes you do everything right, but the bad guys win anyway. And there's nothing you can do but fight harder the next time."

Harvey looked at him a moment, then asked, "Is that how you talked him down?"

"Is what how I talked him down?" Mike asked, confused.

"That thing you do," Harvey replied, "Where no matter how self-destructive someone is being, you make them feel like they're better than that, like they still have something to fight for."

Mike gave him a little smile and said, "I suppose that's the tact I started with, but that's not how I got him to put down the gun."

"What did you say, Mike?" Harvey asked, absorbed. "I saw you take a man who was angry enough to commit first-degree murder and make him weep. What on earth did you say?"

"The one advantage in thinking that you're going to die is that your priorities suddenly become very, very clear," Mike explained. "There's pain and panic, sure, but then everything just sort of crystallizes, and you know in an instant exactly what's important to you. It occurred to me in that moment that I had entirely neglected to remind Andrew Turner of what was actually important to him."

"Which was?" Harvey asked, completely enthralled.

"His son," Mike answered simply. "This whole thing happened because he loved his son so much, and from the moment I made him realize that if he went to jail for killing me, he would only be hurting his son further, it was all over. As far as motivations go, love beats out anger every single time."

"You tell this to anyone around the office, and I'll deny it and threaten to fire you," Harvey said, "But you're going to be one hell of an amazing lawyer someday. And don't ever dare listen to me when I tell you not to care, because it saved your life today."

Mike couldn't help but grin at receiving the highest form of compliment he was likely to get from Harvey, and let out a sigh of relief that it was finally all over. Yet as he laid his head back on the couch, Mike was struck by the lack of closure that he felt. He was just about to ponder this further when Harvey spoke suddenly.

"Mike?" he asked, with uncharacteristic hesitance. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but I have to ask. You said that when you thought Turner was going to shoot you, everything crystallized and you saw what was truly important to you. What did you see?"

Mike stared at Harvey for a full minute before answering. He took in his tailored suit, somewhat mussed from the intense hug he had given Mike earlier that evening, his strong hands, one of which Mike was still holding, and his undeniably handsome face, currently wearing an expression of both worry and curiosity. Then, deciding that since he had already proved that he, Mike Ross, was capable of bravery, he would go for broke, Mike locked eyes with Harvey and said firmly, "Oh, well, that's simple. I saw you...because I love you, Harvey. I think I have for a while, but I didn't know for sure until tonight."

Harvey looked a bit like he'd been hit by a truck, so Mike babbled on, "I'm not just telling you this because I almost died tonight, or because I want to guilt you into saying it back, and, really, I don't expect-"

He was interrupted in this stream of reasoning by Harvey pressing his lips firmly against his. It took a few moments for Mike to overcome his initial surprise, after which he returned the kiss eagerly, placing his hands on either side of Harvey's face just to reassure himself that this was really happening.

Suddenly, Harvey pulled back, looked at him intently, and said, "Mike, when I saw that gun pointed at you tonight, my world just...stopped. I was so scared."

Mike stroked a hand slowly down Harvey's cheek and whispered sympathetically, "I know, Harvey."

"And so maybe it did catapult all of these feelings into the forefront," Harvey continued rapidly, "but I need you to know before we go any further that I am not doing this because I feel guilty, or because you said it first. I am doing this because you, Mike Ross, are the most amazing person I have ever met, and even though I don't deserve you, I want you. And I think, however much I'm capable of it, that I love you, too."

Mike grinned blissfully and kissed him once more, this time wrapping his arms around Harvey's neck to drag him in closer. Harvey, in turn, threw his own arms around Mike's waist and pulled him to his feet, all the while continuing to kiss him. They slowly maneuvered their way toward the bedroom, crashing into various undoubtedly expensive objects as they tried to simultaneously kiss, walk, and take off each other's outer clothes. Eventually, though not without a few bruises, they made it into Harvey's palatial bedroom, both wearing only pants, with shirts and ties flung carelessly over various pieces of sleek furnishings, and shoes and socks long ago discarded.

Mike reached down to unbutton Harvey's fly, but Harvey laid his hand over Mike's to stop him. "Not tonight, Mike," he said, panting a little as he broke the kiss.

"But, why, I mean, I thought..." Mike protested, feeling hurt.

Harvey laid a strong hand on his shoulder. "You're still shaken up from everything that went down tonight," he explained, raising his other hand in a stopping gesture as Mike tried to object, "No, it won't do any good pretending you're not, I can see it in your eyes."

Mike considered trying to deny it, but as it didn't seem like it wouldn't do any good, he said instead, "Even if I am, so what?" and trailed his index finger teasingly up and down Harvey's arm.

"So," Harvey said catching Mike's hand and squeezing it slightly, "You may be feeling fine now, but you've been through a trauma - your mind and body are both exhausted, and you need to rest. You're going to have a lot more to deal with tomorrow."

Mike sighed and walked forward a couple paces to lay his head tiredly on Harvey's shoulder. "Besides," Harvey whispered mischievously in his ear, "When you and I do have sex, I want it to be the only thing on your mind for a week, before and afterward."

Mike grinned and shoved him lightly down onto the bed, letting out a little scream of surprise when Harvey used their joined hands to tug him down as well. Harvey laughed and gave Mike a quick kiss on the lips before pulling the duvet over both of them and saying, "Now go to sleep; that's an order."

"You're the boss," said Mike with a little roll of the eyes, but he did as he was told, ducking under Harvey's outstretched arm to rest his head contentedly on his chest; Harvey, meanwhile, switched off the light, wrapping his arms loosely around Mike before shutting his eyes for the night. A few seconds of this convinced Mike that Harvey was (as usual) right in his assumption that he was, in fact, very, very tired, and before he knew it, he was drifting off to sleep.

A thick fog of dreaming surrounded him, and he slept peacefully enough as blurry and disjointed images flew past his slumbering self. But then, without warning, a sudden vision flashed into view, this one terrifyingly clear, of Andrew Turner cocking his gun and pointing it directly at him. Turner's finger moved toward the trigger, and Mike jolted awake with a scream, his whole body shaking in fear.

"Easy, Mike," Harvey said reassuringly, his voice still tinged with sleep, "Come on, it's all right." He placed his hands firmly on Mike's shoulders and, with some difficulty, managed to coax him back down onto the bed.

As Harvey pivoted to switch on the light, Mike tried to get his breathing under control, but no matter what he did, it would only come in ragged, little gasps. Every inhale felt sharp and painful, as if the expansion of his lungs was scraping against the phantom bullet that came so close to impacting his chest.

Harvey turned back and propped himself up on one elbow next to Mike. He lifted his free hand and began gently smoothing Mike's hair back from his face as he asked, his eyes full of concern, "What happened, Mike? What did you see?"

Mike tried to explain, though the hampered breathing made sentences impossible. "Turner...the gun...he really...shot me...this time...can't...breathe..."

"Mike, listen to me," Harvey said, cradling Mike's face in both hands, "It was just a dream. Turner, the gun, that's all over now, I promise."

"I know..." Mike gasped out, "But..it was...so real..."

"Hey," Harvey said commandingly, looking Mike directly in the eye, "You're with me now. And I swear to you right here, right now, that I will never let anything bad happen to you. You're safe, and that is a promise. Okay, Mike?"

Mike nodded gratefully, and as Harvey leaned down to give him a soft kiss, Mike felt his breathing slowly even out and returned to normal. When Harvey withdrew, Mike ran a thumb over his cheek, whispered a heartfelt, "Thank you," and gave him a small kiss before letting his head fall back onto the pillow. Harvey smiled at him, rolled onto his back and extended his arm out in Mike's direction. Mike gladly accepted his implicit invitation and nestled his head in the crook of Harvey's neck, one hand resting on his shoulder, the other draped over his waist. Harvey, in return, wrapped his right hand tightly around Mike's waist and used the left to softly stroke his hair.

"I love you, Harvey," Mike murmured, feeling completely safe and protected for the first time that night.

"Mmm, you said that already," Harvey retorted, though Mike could tell he was smiling. "Go to sleep, kid." Mike did so almost immediately, this time unplagued by nightmares, and was consequently not awake when Harvey pressed a small kiss to his forehead and whispered, "I love you, too, damn it."


End file.
